Meanwhile, IT should relax about the costs of supporting mobile. It turns out that BlackBerrys require the most IT support, so dump those to save money if that's your concern. (iOS is the cheapest to support, so get iPhones and iPads instead.) Yes, as more people use mobile devices, mobile support costs will go up in toto. But the alternative is not to use them -- hardly a smart option today. As I've shown, corporate benefits go up 15 to 30 times more than the management costs, including support.

The best ways to rein in mobile support costs:

Keep the security controls from being so complicated that people keep needing help. For example, the more complex the password requirements, the more you'll spend on password support -- and risk people taping their passwords to their devices.

Educate people that cellular networks aren't reliable, so when they get a bad signal to not call IT but to move to a different location and check how many bars they get onscreen.

By the way, these are by far the two top mobile support calls, vendors tell me. IT can reduce the former through better security usability, the second through user education (almost always given short shrift, causing unnecessary spend to remediate).

Enjoy the benefits of consumerizationIf you follow the five steps I outline here, you'll have a more secure, more productive, more rational environment for user-facing technology that costs less to manage than you think.

None is a new idea; you hear them routinely in various context from CIOs, IT managers, consultants, and even vendors. But they tend to get lost in the fear-based, reactive approach too common in the IT community -- and stoked by unscrupulous providers.

Take a deep breath, step back, and work with the rest of your business and IT compatriots to do better safely. You can do so with far less cost, labor, and emotional toll than chasing imaginary demons with a junkyard of point solutions you're being pushed to use. Be strategic, proactive, and business-enabling instead.

Galen Gruman is an executive editor at InfoWorld focused on mobile and user-facing technologies, an author of more than 40 how-to books, editorial CTO for IDG US Media (InfoWorld's parent company), and an adjunct analyst focused on enterprise mobility at IDC's IT Executive Program.